David B. Collins, Green for U.S. Senate

Ted Cruz, escucha: ¡Estamos en la lucha!

I couldn’t let today pass without a tumblr entry on today’s march downtown (Spanish because the English-language media mostly ignored it). The cause of the day: immmigration reform. The target of the day: Ted Cruz.

Too bad I didn’t take pictures, but I’m getting less & less camera happy as the years go on and other people take pictures of bloody everything. If you want to see some, check this Facebook event page.

The march was beautiful. The turnout was phenomenal. We had church groups, labor groups, community groups, political advocacy groups, and a lot of individuals who just wanted to demonstrate for immigration reform. I marched next to a teacher from Dallas who had taken a personal business day and driven here for this march. What, nothing like this going on in DFW? This march was supposed to be nationwide.

The crowd gathered in Antioch Park, near the historic Antioch Baptist Church and the Chevron Plaza, and processed two-by-two down the sidewalk on Smith Street to the Mickey Leland Federal Reconstruction Project. As we arrived at the Federal Building, chanting and drumming and networking, I turned to longtime local activist Peggy Atwood and asked semi-rhetorically why Ted Cruz would have an office in the Federal Building. Wouldn’t it be more fitting for a senator who wants to decrease the size of the federal government to rent office space from a private-sector, free-market office building, rather than keeping a fancy downtown office at taxpayers’ expense?

The highlight of the whole affair for me was the papier-mâché puppets that someone made of Ted Cruz: Anti-Immigrant and Papa Rafael Cruz: Immigrant. I’m still looking for photos of them to link here.

I don’t think of Ted Cruz as “anti-immigrant” per se. I perceive him as anti-poor. He doesn’t have a problem with professional or middle-class immigrants, but he is against allowing economic refugees—those without the resources to immigrate legally—to cross into the United States for such trivial purposes as survival. His father, after all, came to the US as a political refugee from Battista’s Cuba, which in Cruz’s mind is hunky-dory (quite understandably). Here is a rundown of his positions on the issue of immigration reform and immigrants’ rights.

Senator Cruz’s astute legal mind could probably come up with a perfectly good argument for why undocumented immigrants should not be deported and should be given a path to citizenship. He was a debater in school, and that’s what debaters are good at: arguing both sides (not simultaneously) because they have to be able to do just that in competition. But he won’t. Even if he can conceive such an argument, he won’t articulate it. Despite his alleged Tea Party bona fides, he has too much invested in the status quo, in keeping poor people and immigrants scrambling for whatever crumbs they can find, in protecting the power and privilege of the moneyed establishment.

(Believe me, I’m not just gratuitously sprinkling Latin phrases into this entry, nor is it a reflection of the largely Latin crowd that gathered downtown.)

Cruz + Cornyn = Obstruction^2

This morning, after four hours’ sleep, I am feeling a little lazy and a little delirious. I decided that I wanted to take a few minutes to post something topical here despite the lack of functioning brainspace. Instead of plugging “Ted Cruz” or “John Cornyn” into the default search engine, I went with “Cruz Cornyn.”

The only recent article featuring those two names is an item from Progress Texas about how the Twin Towers of Texas shot down Caitlin Halligan’s nomination to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals (that’s the one for DC). The nomination passed the Judiciary Committee, on which C&C both have seats, but they used a the tried & true threat of filibuster, against which the Democrats could not muster the necessary 60 votes for cloture, to stop it in the full Senate.

Progress Texas goes on to point out that Cornyn has been diligent in making sure that the Judicial Branch under President Obama remains as nonfunctional as possible in Texas, stonewalling nominations for federal district judgeships, one of which has been vacant since 2008.

Here is a somewhat more detailed analysis of the cloture action, and the history of the nomination, from Legal News Line. This piece does mention Cornyn or Cruz by name, interestingly; it does note that Halligan is one of many serial failures in the judicial pipeline, a disturbing trend in which the White House tosses names out multiple times over the years, and Senate Republicans repeatedly say, “Uh-uh.” At least the ever-accommodating-when-it-suits-him Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, voting in committee, voted Present on Halligan instead of No.

Paul and Cruz…Pablo Cruise?

Dumb title, I know. Also, I know I have not been keeping this thing up lately. I’ve been wanting to over the past week, but it’s hard to do any cogent analysis when I have trouble just getting oxygen in my system. When I get a cold, which isn’t often, it’s a doozy.

But I couldn’t pass up posting a link to this item posted in Truthout.

This Shadow Senator tumblr is mostly about exposing what doofuses (doofi?) we have representing Texas in the Senate. But even a blind clock finds an acorn twice a day…or something like that. If you’re going to identify with the Tea Party, which is at root a populist movement, you have to show once in a while that you’re looking out for the people and their inalienable rights.

Congrats, Ted & Rand, for at least pointing out that the President’s kill-list policy is just plain wrong, morally and Constitutionally. Thank you, Truthout for constantly reminding us that if a Republican President did what Obama is doing, Democrats across the nation would be marching in the streets.

End warmfuzzyfest. Here’s a cover story from a recent Houston Press that lists Senator Cruz among the Top 10 Weirdest Congressmembers. You may not agree with all of the assessments; I sure don’t. Alan Grayson may be weirdly sensationalist, but once you get past the circus rhetoric and theatrics, at least he talks sense. Sheila Jackson Lee? Temperamental camera-hog, sure, but not weird, and certainly not in the same league with Michele Bachmann.

VAWA and Hagel Updates

NO surprise here: Both senators from Texas were among the all-Republican-men’s chorus of 22 NO votes on the Violence Against Women Act. All the women in the Senate, from both major parties, were among the 78 who voted YEA.

It isn’t every day that every single senator is present for a vote, even on major legislation. Good on ya for voting, guys, even if I think you’re wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong.

Cornyn gets a special mention in the ThinkProgress bulletin:

Two Senators — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) — also offered significant amendments to the VAWA bill. Grassley’s amendment stripped all Native American, LGBT, and undocumented victim protections. It was voted down on Thursday of last week. Cornyn’s, aimed exclusively on the bill’s language relating to tribal lands, failed on Monday.

(Yea, I found the Blockquote button!)

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) also offered an amendment exempting violence perpetrated by non–Native Americans tribal lands. It also failed. But then, this blog is supposed to focus on Cornyn & Cruz, and two oil-country wingnuts with surnames beginning with “C” are plenty to handle. So forget that you just read this paragraph. Thanks.

Read More

Hey, Senator Cruz, Would You Like to Buy a VAWA?

From maddowblog again:

The Family Research Council is taking VAWA opposition so seriously that it’s told congressional Republicans that this vote will be scored — if they want to maintain a high rating on religious right scorecards, they’ll have to vote against reauthorization.

This probably won’t make much of a difference, at least in the Senate. On the vote on the motion to proceed earlier this week, the final tally was 85 to 8, with only Republicans on the far-right fringe — folks like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Marco Rubio — voting against even debating the bill.

Here’s an item on the same topic from Feministing. The bit about being elected the “3th Senator from Texas” has long since been fixed on Cruz’s senate.gov page (he’s our 34th US Senator since Texas became a state in 1845).

Keep in mind, this was a vote on whether to bring the reauthorization bill to the floor for consideration, not on the reauthorization itself. The vote to continue funding for VAWA will probably be much closer than 85 to 8; it may not clear the Republican House. All this despite the Act’s history of passing by large margins.

For more perspectives, just search “ted cruz violence against women act.”

My Overdue Congratulatory Letter to Ted Cruz

Republicans should argue that the economy is a “growing pie,” and that Republicans need to shake the perception that they’re for big business and rich people, Cruz said.

Dear Senator Cruz:

I hope that you have not lost sleep wondering why the 2012 Green Party nominee for US Senate has not sent you a letter of congratulation yet, nearly three months after your impressive electoral victory. At this time, I hope to rectify that oversight and apologize profusely for my tardiness.

My poor excuse for not sending the note in a timely fashion was that I was physically and emotionally exhausted by a final-week flurry of campaign events, an exhaustion that you may also have felt but never showed. For your first attempt at elected office, you and your staff did a fantastic job, maintaining a campaign tempo appropriate to your almost guaranteed victory in the general election.

I was also caught up in analyzing the numbers from the general election, with the goal of formulating strategies for improving the Green Party’s showing in 2014 and 2016.

The real congratulations should have followed your victory in the primary runoff in June. I would also extend kudos to Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst for having the courage to participate in the debates despite your overwhelming oratorical advantage. Mud may have been flung from both sides in that race, but your victory over the establishment candidate came from a combination of your forensic gifts and your willingness to channel the discontent of conservatives fed up with the Republican Party’s duplicities.

I have no great love for the Tea Party movement, but I do profess to a certain admiration for it. I do love it when presumed Tea Party candidates and office-holders prove their Tea Party bona fides by expressing views that distinguish them from the Republican Party establishment, not just more extreme versions of standard Republican positions.

Right here and now, I shall state in all sincerity my perception that you are a very intelligent person, despite my profound disagreements with many of your conclusions. The quotation above on the philosophical question of what the Republican Party does or should stand for articulates a position that, if put into practice, would make your party stronger. Changing public perceptions of the Republican Party will be difficult and expensive, but for the Party’s long-term benefit it is the right place to start.

I am no big fan of the GOP, the Democratic Party, or our diseased two-party system; however, I am a fan of healthy, diverse parties as a symptom of a healthy democratic republic.

At this late date, I can also point to your nuanced position on the bipartisan proposal for immigration reform as an example of your principled approach to policy. Here you, son of a Cuban immigrant whose sympathies in the 1950s some of your party-mates would label as “terrorist,” have shown that he you are a deep thinker who reaches his decisions based on a set of cherished principles. Just like you, I have problems with the proposal, too, though I can see the virtue in portions of it, and I welcome continued bipartisan dialog on this important issue.

I don’t necessarily agree with the principles that you cherish, or your interpretations of them. In my experience, sometimes national governments not only can fix problems in society, but may be the only institutions with the resources to implement solutions.

Sometimes principled positions are symptomatic of small-minded consistency, a fault of which I have accused our senior senator recently. But as a Green who has long bragged that our positions all spring from the Ten Key Values of the Green Movement, I admire the way you buttress your positions by relating them to those fundamental principles to which you adhere.

Somehow, the principle has evolved in conservative and libertarian circles that government spending is bad by its very nature, a necessary evil at best. Historically, Republicans have not always embraced this notion as a partisan tenet; it is a perversion of Ronald Reagan’s simplistic rhetoric about government being The Problem. The way some legislators who hold this view still wheel and deal for contracts for their favorite corporate contributors and pork-barrel projects shows that too many of them are craven hypocrites. Senator, if you are a true Tea Party Republican, with the libertarian tendencies you appear to embody, you will speak out loudly and proudly against corporate welfare, earmarks, and irrelevant riders attached to important legislation.

Here is an anecdote that illustrates how even Greens and Tea Partiers can find common ground. Recently I traveled to Odessa to help organize Greens in Ector County. On the first leg of my return flight, I sat next to a man who asked me about the Green Party embroidery on my knit shirt (I refuse to call it a Polo shirt). As succinctly as I could, I explained what the Green movement is about. He told me in turn that he identified with the Tea Party, and that like me he was fed up with both major parties. This to me is the true essence of the Tea Party movement, before it was hijacked by multi-billionaires. I told him that despite my disagreements with the Tea Party (and the ugly ways their discontent is sometimes expressed), I find their fundamental outrage at the system legitimate. Both major parties have contributed to the degradation of the American polity and the painful screwing-over of 99% of us.

Senator, among other things, it would be a thrill to see you, clearly an intelligent person, showing leadership on vital issues such as the genuine global threat posed by climate change and try to steer the Republican Party back toward accepting the conclusions of the scientific community. I do not expect that you will, but I would be a thrill to see. There are many positions that I would love for you to take on a variety of issues, though I fully expect that you will fall into line with your fellow Senate Republicans on most of them because that’s how our broken Congress operates.

That is why, after extending my sincere congratulations on your victory, I will continue use this blogspace to analyze your words and actions from a progressive perspective. Sometimes my analysis will be snarky, and I will periodically indulge in petty name-calling for purposes of entertaining my readers. But since you are an intelligent person, I hope that you will not perceive any intended disrespect toward you, your staff, or the office of United States Senator from the Lone Star State of Texas.

Sincerely,

David B. Collins
Green Party of Texas
2012 Nominee for US Senate

Cornyn Extra: Primary Keep On Burnin’

Yes, I promised in my previous posting here that I would post an all-Cruz entry next, but I just need to break in here with something that has serendipitously appeared on maddowblog. See also the original piece (don’t worry, it’s short) from The Hill.

Steve Benen’s analysis asserts that Cornyn’s rhetoric is shifting even more obstreperously rightward because there are rumblings of a primary challenge in 2014. Of course, any credible primary challenge would come from the Tea Party or other fringe segment, since Cornyn is perceived as a member of the Republican establishment.

Further signs of a rightward drift include:

Just this month, Texas’ senior senator wrote an ignorant screed on the debt ceiling, voted against emergency relief for Hurricane Sandy victims, and yesterday, was one of just three senators to oppose John Kerry’s Secretary of State nomination.

Benen’s conclusion is not unreasonable, given the Tea-Party insurgency that led to Ted Cruz’s runoff upset of Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in last year’s Republican scramble to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison. However, what makes anyone think that current Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is any less of an establishment figure?

(Quick aside to Mr. Benen: There are two t’s in the Attorney General’s surname. Also, it may not have occurred to you to find out that, ironically, Cornyn preceded Abbott in the AG’s chair. I know that any blogmaestro as prolific as you sometimes does not have time to check spelling (or even facts), though generally I appreciate the job you do for Rachel & company.)

Anyway…Abbott has said some crazy right-wing stuff over the years, even recently, but it’s usually the rational kind of crazy. Underlying the seeming extremity of his rhetoric is a legitimate (perhaps distasteful to progressives) political purpose. He does not have the gift for cramming his foot into his mouth the way, say, Michele Bachmann does. I don’t perceive him as a flamethrower. However, I never saw Cornyn as a flamethrower either; Cornyn may indeed be trying to change his stripes.

If Abbott does have Senatorial ambitions, those ambitions may wind up “splitting” the Texas Republican Party more deeply. But such a split, paradoxically, may wind up strengthening the party, because the media outlets and their consumers will actually pay attention. Conventional wisdom on primary battles is generally dead wrong, as I believe Benen would agree.

In 2012, Texas media in particular focused so much on the Republican Primary contest, since the Republican victor was practically assured of gaining the Senate seat, that the Democratic Primary and subsequent runoff got almost no attention. When I campaigned for the seat last year, too many voters with whom I spoke did not even know who the Democratic nominee was, even in Paul Sadler’s Piney Woods home base. As judged by the statewide undervote on races with no Democratic candidate, at least half of Sadler’s 3.1 million votes came from straight-ticket voting, not necessarily from people who were fans of his.

Consider also just how little damage the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary battles did to that party. If anything, not having a sure-fire winner, as well as having some telegenic personalities on the stump, was a long-term benefit to the Democrats nationwide.

Primary challenges may wind up knocking out established incumbents, costing one’s state or district some vital seniority in Congress, but they are a sign of a healthy party with a diversity of positions on issues.

Keystone Cornyn

This entry will concentrate on Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn III of Texas, who has spoken out recently on two issues near and dear to him: oil (which he likes) and abortion (which he does not like). The next entry will feature an all-Cruz rant.

On 23 January, Cornyn joined 52 other members of the Senate in sending a letter to Obama practically pleading with him to get the Keystone XL Pipeline project back on track. In this bipartisan subset of the Senate, as one might predict, the Democratic signatories included Blue Dogs such as Max Baucus of Montana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

From Cornyn’s site, here is a transcript of the letter, embedded in a press release. It traffics in the usual misinformation about the project: e.g., that it will be a huge job creator, that the US national interest will benefit from getting oil from our friendly neighbor, and that the pipeline is environmentally safe.

For those not following this issue closely, because this proposed pipeline crosses national borders, the State Department collects the information and passes the recommendation on to the President. With a little nudge from some concerned citizens who encircled the White House a couple of years ago, Obama suspended the northern portion of the pipe, which extends from the border to Cushing, Oklahoma. However, the portion from Cushing to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur, Texas, is currently under construction and stirring up a bit of controversy. (Read this particular page for more on why KXL is, to put it diplomatically, a colossally stupid idea. Note that because the page focuses on the pipeline specifically, it does not include the environmental devastation wrought by the mining of tar sands in Northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.)

Now it appears that the governor of Nebraska has signed off on the re-routed northern portion of the pipe, which miraculously no longer endangers the Sand Hills Nature Sanctuary or, I presume, Ogallala Aquifer. So Cornyn & Company are hot to convince Obama to approve the project.

As climatologist James Hansen reminds us, “Game Over.” Thanks for playing, Senator.

SPECIAL ELECTION IN SENATE DISTRICT 6

I must digress a little at this point. The Keystone boondoggle is one of those issues that is really difficult to communicate as a campaign issue. The first obstacle is getting the average voter to listen or read long enough to understand it, even if it has a direct, deleterious impact on his or her life.

Maria Selva understands this difficulty better than most folks. After first running for the US House in District 29 in November, and then in the special State Senate election this month, she hoped to get folks in Southeast Houston concerned enough to do something about the possibility of tar sands oil being refined almost literally in their back yards.

Of course, the major problem is that refining tar sands oil anywhere on the planet is inviting the Four Horsemen of Climate Change to enter your house, drink up all your liquor, and ride off with your women. But the air in neighborhoods like Manchester and along the Highway 225 corridor is bad enough, causing alarming rates of asthma and various cancers. What happens when Valero’s refinery adds tar sands, perhaps the dirtiest fossil fuel known, to the already lethal mix?

The eight candidates who filed for this open election had six weeks to make their cases in this election, held to replace the late Mario Gallegos, who passed away on 16 October 2012, just three weeks before his re-election. Maria did not have a lot of money for fancy signs or TV ads. She and her Greenie volunteers had to take her case directly to the people of SD6, wherever they might be found.

The results of this lightning campaign: As expected, a runoff will take place in February between two local Democratic luminaries, Carol Alvarado and Sylvia Garcia, because neither received the necessary 50% of the vote. But this was certainly no day for fans of democracy to celebrate. Out of about 290,000 registered voters in the district, a little more than 16,000 bothered to vote at all. Turnout was 5.64%, more due to ignorance than apathy: People flat didn’t know that there was an election. Voters may have seen the campaign signs all around and presumed that they were left over from November, something that happens all the time here. After all, turnout in the November general (and Presidential) election, for a safe seat destined to be won by a dead guy, was a respectable 48%.

Five-point-six-four percent. Turnout at the runoff may very well be lower than that.

If you’re curious, Maria, the only candidate bold enough to talk about Keystone XL and tar sands, received exactly 73 votes, or 0.45% of the total. The cliché “Vote as if your life depends on it” does not apply in SD6. But that district is hardly unique. No matter where in mainstream society one takes this message, it is really difficult for people to wrap their minds around. If they know anything about Keystone XL, they know the corporate propaganda as repeated in the mainstream media. They don’t connect the potential for leaks with the massive Enbridge spill that blackened the Kalamazoo River just a few years ago. They don’t get that Canada has waited all these decades to develop the tar sands for a very good reason: It’s multiple environmental disasters not even waiting to happen.

Sigh.

ON TO THE ABORTION THING

So here is the entirety of Cornyn’s remarks to the March for Life Rally in DC, in observation of the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision:

“I want to welcome and thank all Texans who have made the trip to Washington to make their voices heard.  We’ve taken important steps in recent years to defend life, including passage of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. I believe that all life should be treated with dignity and respect, and I am committed to doing all I can to protect innocent life. I am proud so many Texans join me in sharing this core belief.”

The press release also notes:

Sen. Cornyn has a strong record defending human life, including co-sponsoring the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which the Senate passed in 2003 and was signed into law. Sen. Cornyn continues to fight against the use of any federal dollars to subsidize abortions.

Y’know, a lot of right-wingers love to get in the faces of liberals and progressives who support abortion rights but oppose capital punishment, accusing us of inconsistency at best and hypocrisy at worst. For all I know, Cornyn really does “believe that all life should be treated with dignity and respect,” and may be committed to protecting “innocent life.” Shall we talk about deepening poverty in the United States, and the increasing difficulty of climbing out of it? Shall we talk about drone strikes overseas? Shall we talk about kids in Gaza killed by Israeli bombs, or average Israeli citizens killed by rockets launched by Hamas in retaliation for Israel’s Apartheid policies?

Even if you compare the number of abortions here (too many, in my very pro-choice opinion, but that’s another discussion) with the number of “collateral” drone attack victims (not nearly as many), the comparison is not relevant. US foreign policy, constructed on behalf of our corporate titans, continues to impoverish and injure and sicken and kill too many people in too many countries. And Senator Cornyn seems to be OK with that.

The Green Party in general believes, and I concur, that the solution to too many abortions is not to criminalize pregnant women and their doctors for performing or undergoing a legitimate medical procedure. It lies in constructing a society in which women can more easily avoid unwanted pregnancies, toward the goal of every child being born not just wanted, but cared for within a loving familial network; of parents and children provided the freedom, encouragement, and resources to strive toward their full potential. Nations in Europe and elsewhere are already moving in that direction, sometimes even with help (or minimal interference) from conservative policy makers. When it comes to creating a more humane and just society, the US is dragging its 620 million feet.

Shadow Senator: Whoa, 12 Days Just Got Away

So I’ve been a little busy figuring out what I want to do when I grow up again. The tutoring business is just starting to take root. The novel that I’m now actively writing keeps calling me back to try to bring it into fully formed existence some time before I die. There’s also the HAUS, GreenwatchTV, and the First UU Choir. I’ve also started performing some with Continuum. Living one’s life sometimes gets in the way of tending to one’s tumblr, which is why I’ve never really started and maintained an official blog.

CORNYN GETS THE WHIPPING POST

Meanwhile, since the 113th Congress went to work, guess whom the Senate Republicans elected their party whip? As the Roll Call article mentions, Senator John Cornyn used his election as an opportunity to pick up where Senator Ted Cruz left off in my previous tumblr entry, threatening at least a partial government shutdown to save us all from the killer deficit.

Yeah, shut down the gubmint! That’ll learn ‘em!

So for those of you who actually watch TV news, especially any of the Big Three cable news channels (using the term “news” generously), be prepared for every Republican Congresscritter and his or her dog to work the phrase “partial government shutdown” into his or her TV appearances. I say this not to extrapolate from what Texas’s senatorial delegation has said, but to point out that this is how the Republicans operate: running on talking points.

When voting time comes in Congress, the Whip’s job is to cajole or coerce one’s fellow partisans into voting along the Party Line. So Cornyn’s new job is terribly appropriate for him. There are few Republicans in the Capitol more adept at articulating and adhering to the Party Line than he. In fact, it’s all he seems to do, which makes it a challenge for me to watch an entire five-minute interview with him without getting distracted or dozing off.

Last week, Cornyn got a little face time with Wolf Blitzer on the Cabal News Network. Cornyn, who sits (or formerly sat?) on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is concerned that his former Senate colleague, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, is the wrong Republican for the job of Defense Secretary. It’s a party-line thing.

Give credit to Cornyn once again for personifying that “hobgoblin of small minds,” consistency, in holding the Party Line, especially when you discover that he used almost exactly the same verbiage for Wolf Blitzer that he had used in an appearance with Andrea Mitchell the previous day. He gets bonus points for pointing out Hagel’s cardinal sin of not holding that same Party Line, in that Hagel has declared himself open to negotiating with Iran and Hamas, has suggested that the power of the Jewish Lobby in the US distorts our Middle Eastern policy to our detriment. Hagel even said these things while occupying a seat in the Senate. So, Cornyn concludes, Hagel is an honorable person who has served his country well, but he’s full of shit.

Chucky Babe, if the Republicans on the Hill want to hear your opinion, they’ll give it to you. Expressing your own opinion? That just means your working too hard.

CRUZ GETS OUT OF TOWN

Our junior senator, after just two weeks on the job, went on a little Republican holiday with Senate Minority Leader Mitchell Y. McConnell and three other colleagues. To Israel. Less than a month after visiting Israel as a senator-elect. I wish I were kidding.

Piggybacking on this post-Bush-Cheney trend for public officials not announcing trips to the Middle East and South Asia until they arrive there, Cruz & Company went a-leavin’ on a jet plane last Thursday, and apparently nobody noticed they were gone until Cruz tweeted a picture of the McConnell Quintet with Bibi Netanyahu himself.

Oh yeah, Cruz is now a member of the Armed Services Committee and the Judiciary Committee, just like Cornyn. It’s rather rare for two senators from the same state and party to sit on the same committee. According to this document (pdf), published just last year, it’s against the Republican Party’s internal rules. It’s really rare for two elephants from the same barn to serve together on two or more committees. Here is Cruz’s complete list of committee assignments, pasted from his senate.gov page:

In the Senate, Ted serves on the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; the Committee on Armed Services; the Committee on the Judiciary; the Special Committee on Aging; and the Committee on Rules and Administration.

As an astute reader might expect, Cruz is also not likely to support Hagel’s nomination to lead the Pentagon (pdf). Like Big Bro Cornyn, Cruz will of course be reasonable about giving Hagel a fair hearing in the Armed Services Committee before hanging him in effigy.

REFLECTIONS

I’m not even sure how I feel about the prospect of Chuck Hagel running DoD. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, many Progressives got a little orgasmic every time a Republican legislator or Executive Branch official left the ranch and expressed doubts about the war. The biggest, noisiest O came when General/Secretary Colin Powell finally went public with his real opinions about OIF…years after he had carried water for Bush-Cheney and taken that disgraceful dog & pony show to the United Nations. Hagel became something of a peacenik hero for making his reservations known (belatedly, it turned out), mostly reflecting his Vietnam experience.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a Democratic president nominating a Republican for a top-tier Cabinet post, or vice versa. But it is the Beltway Establishment that remains the festering sore of our polity, and I am tired of Establishment folks of either major party having a lock on those posts. Is Jacob Lew (Treasury) really a change of direction from Timothy Geithner? Does John Kerry (State) really represent an improvement over Hillary Clinton?

Being a religious agnostic, I don’t pray in the commonly understood sense of the word. The accused heretic Meister Eckhart von Hochheim supposedly said, “If the only prayer you ever said in your entire life was ‘Thank you,’ that would suffice.” (I believe he said it in Latin, so the wording you know may be different.) I say “Thank you” quite a lot, not just to housemates and waitstaff and other people who help make my life easier, but to the Universe, sometimes saying it aloud, just for being so astounding. The other prayer I send out to the Universe comes from the cynic in me, and is usually kept silent:

“May I be pleasantly surprised today.”

Welcome the Lucky 113th Congress!

I was born on the 13th of November. When I was a somewhat precocious pre-schooler, somebody asked me what my lucky number was. It didn’t take long for me to answer, “Thirteen.” Here we are in 2013, with the 113th Congress freshly sworn in, just in time for its first vacation.

I will spend most of ‘13 being 50 years old, only half the curmudgeon I was at 25. I will also begin a new project in ‘13, serving as your Green Shadow Senator. The Shadow Senator project will include using this tumblr space to monitor the comings and goings and doings and neglectings of Texas’s Senatorial Sith, Count Cornyn and Darth Cruz.

Following John & Ted’s Capitol Adventures will require me to do some things I find distasteful: e.g., looking periodically at their respective websites, setting up Google Alerts for whenever these gentlemen speak, vote, appear in photo ops, wipe their bums, etc.

Most likely I will avoid getting on their e-mail lists. When I was living in Rep. John Culberson’s district, I inadvertently subscribed to his electronic newsletters, which made me cringe with alarming regularity. It’s easier to wear one’s contempt for democracy on one’s sleeve via e-mails and communiqués to a targeted audience than on one’s public website.

I am also drawing a thick, black line at Liking their Facebook pages just so I can lurk or possibly troll them. This I do, not because I expect the candidates’ designated FB scribes to say anything hateful, but because the comments will likely be saturated with Hate, and that Hate will ooze into my news feed.

A BRIEF TANGENT, IF I MAY

Let this be known: I am perfectly aware that Republicans do not have a monopoly on toxic spew on the Internet and other fora. Many Democrats, and even some Progressive types, can be just as guilty of dehumanizing their right-wing counterparts. One would hope that Progressives in particular could rise above such pettiness. It’s one of the reasons that truly progressive talk radio will never do well on the commercial frequencies: For the most part, we’re not nasty enough to be entertaining; if we do resort to personal attacks, we forfeit our Progressive Cred.

However, it is my observation that lefties get nasty in response to a right wing that overtly hates poor people, people of color, women, sexual minorities—a right wing that wants lefties dead or locked up in camps. To them, we represent change, in the form of overturning straight-white-moneyed-male dominance.

CORNYN WRITES A LETTER

Today, following yesterday’s vote for Speaker of the House, official Congressional business includes convening briefly, then letting the House count the Electoral Votes to certify that Barack Obama is still black—er, I mean President. I will likely rant about the Electoral College in a future post.

Cornyn found time to parrot Republican talking points regarding the “Fiscal Cliff” negotiations in today’s Houston Chronicle (which has hidden most of the op-ed behind its paywall). Republicans accusing the President (and Democrats in Congress) of brinksmanship or obstructionism is like Khloe calling Kim or Kourtney “shallow,” or accusing them of having the initials “KK.”

Congressional Republicans as a whole must never ever ever be perceived as compromising on basic economic principles, such as fattening the portfolios of the 1%. After all, if you’re not one of the 1%, it’s your own damn fault, Lazybones. Democrats, on the other hand, have proven themselves willing to sacrifice popular “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare, but only if the Republicans give in on tax increases, knowing full well that they won’t give in.

Any legislator who moans about our $16 trillion national debt and refuses to consider raising taxes is disingenuous at best, a fool at worst—or perhaps vice versa. Members from both parties know that the only way to close that astronomical gap is a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts. Members from both parties also know that some of their biggest contributors have a stake in keeping the debt outlandishly high. Debtzilla® forces the government to shovel more interest into the fiery maws of the international banks who hold those debts. Yum. Obscenely rich get obscenely richer.

Meanwhile, despite permanent tax cuts, the rest of us make do with less, because this craptastic economy, combined with offshoring and outsourcing, exerts that famous Downward Pressure on Wages, including on salaries for middle-class office jobs.

CRUZ SNIPES

OK, so what about the new guy? Yesterday Rafael E. “Ted” Cruz got sworn in, then echoed the whole shtick about a partial government shutdown from Cornyn’s op-ed. No, no, and no, Teddy Boy, your doin’ it wrong! On 3 January you smile and shake hands and act all bipartisan-like. You wait at least until the next day to call in bomb threats.

Cruz also said something about guns:

A few hours later, Cruz was vowing to do whatever he can to stymie Feinstein’s effort to reimpose a ban on semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips in response to the school massacre in Newtown, Conn.

“Gun registries have been used as a preface to confiscation,” he said when asked for his views on one of the hot-button issues facing Congress. “It’s a tragedy, but it’s not a tragedy that should be answered by restricting the constitutional rights of all Americans.”

Ah yes, the Constitution, which Senator Cruz has memorized and is tattooed in its entirety on his back. Of course, by “Constitution,” Cruz generally means the Second and Tenth Amendments thereto. I hope one of the first resolutions Cruz introduces or sponsors will be to make the entire nation a Well Regulated Militia. That way maybe I can have not just an AR-15, but maybe the grenade launcher I’ve always wanted. My housing co-op could probably get a good deal on a used tank and convert it to run on biodiesel. So when the federal government shuts down, we can take over the job of providing essential services by busting into a Walmart and distributing the goods to those in need—that is, if we can get past the Walton family’s anti-tank missiles.

Sigh. I’m spent. I have real-life things to get to. Back at it within a few days.